


a matter of fate

by lizardlesbian



Category: Homestuck, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Blood Space War, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Minor Character Death, Rose tries her best, Rosemary Month, and so do the EgHarCrocklishs, the Strilondes live in Night Vale, this is incredibly gay, week two - crossover week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:23:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7790083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizardlesbian/pseuds/lizardlesbian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angels are terribly disorganized employers, but it's ok. At least they're good friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a matter of fate

On the late afternoon of an unsufferably hot day, Rose Lalonde was approached by an Erika while shopping at the Ralph's. This wasn't such an uncanny event, of course: the tall beings citizens were forbidden to refer to as Angels, all of whom were named Erika, would often shop at the Ralph's for Old Woman Josie, their generous host, but being way more forgetful than one would expect holy creatures to be, they kept asking other shoppers for help when they didn't quite remember were the soup aisle was, or weren't able to find the Flaky-Os. Those who would help them would then be rewarded with a protective aura of holiness around their person for the rest of the week – annoying to look at, yes, but quite useful for whoever lived in a city such as Night Vale and was used to the constant threat of death as one would get used to the annoying buzz of mosquitoes during hot summer nights.

This particular occasion, however, was different, and Rose knew so the moment the not-Angel came into her view. It was a sort of sixth sense, someone could say, that came from having studied psychology and being able to “read people”, to which Rose would scoff and reply that no medical expert had such a thing

“You have been chosen,” the tall being announced solemly, and Rose rolled her eyes at em.

“Not even a _“hello, how are you”_ first, Erika? How rude, Josie would be appalled by your lack of manners. Also, chosen for what? You have to admit it's a bit vague to expect me to understand what you're referring to if I don't even have a context for it.” She scoffed, although her irritation dimmed when she saw the shame reflected in eir many eyes. Ey had probably ascended only recently and were getting used to eir new existence, and despite what a certain someone would say, she actually did have a heart, _Dave_. Her tone of voice became softer, more understanding. “Is this about the new puppy invasion? I have already told a friend of yours it's not me who takes care of all the dogs in town, but it's Jade Harley. I know it's easy to mix people up, especially since me and her live right next to each other “

“No, no! I know miss Harley and her many, many dogs, that was already taken care of by Erika.” Ey took a deep breath to calm emself down. “Forgive me, I'm still not sure how to approach all of this...” ey made ample gestures with three of eir arms, as if to indicate the vastity of the universe. Yes, definitely a newbie. Rose nodded, encouraging em to go on. “It's a matter of fate, and apparently the balance of time and space depends heavily on the outcome of this event. The higher ups discussed this through, and they all agreed that a skilled prophet such as yourself would be the best choice.

Rose did her best to avoid grimacing in front of Erika, but she wasn't sure how successful she was. One manages to foresee future catastrophes once or twice and people start calling them a “prophet” right away, without even consulting them first.

“Best choice in what?” And to this, the Angel (not an Angel, damn, Angels weren't _real_ ) smiled several smiles, all of them so radiant Rose had to shield her eyes in order to avoid getting blinded.

“To avoid interplanetary slaughter, of course!” Ey gave them a paper written in different languages, many of which belonging to long dead civilties, humans and not. Rose was able to read all of them, of course, thanks to both the Gift of Gab she was awarded as a girl scout and the preparation Night Vale High gave her. Her Modified Sumerian and Funny Greek were almost impeccable, with only the barest hint of accent. “In exactly four days and thirteen hours a group of twelve aliens will be appearified near City Hall. You will need to be there to welcome them and offer them a place to be at for as long as they will be on our planet. The others left you intructions here with everything you will need to know to be prepared at your best.”

“And if I refused?” Rose asked, more out of curiosity than as an actual question. Humans like the idea that they have multiple choices to make during their lives. Most of them never do.

Erika's smiles fell a bit, but didn't completely disappear. “In that case, my superiors told me to remind you of the Blood Space War, miss Lalonde.”

Rose nodded and took the piece of paper from eir hands, in a symbolic gesture of acceptance of her duty that Erika didn't understand, and so ey were surprised and maybe a little hurt when she went back to her grocery shopping without even saying goodbye to em. That same night, during dinner, she told her twin to prepare the spare rooms. When he asked her for clarifications, she just said “we're going to have guests very soon”, to which Dave rolled his eyes , muttering “fucking prophets” under his breath as he got a hold of his phone to call John and ask him for spare bedings.

 

The Strider-Lalonde family had been living in Night Vale for as long as they could remember, which wasn't saying much, considering the fact that they were all around their thirties and the only existing members of their family. At some point they must have had parents, of at the very least guardians, some would tell them, but they would reply that they had always lived with their siblings and no one else. Not only this, but they also had close to no memories about their childhoods. A similar thing had happened to their neighbours and childhood friends, the Egbert-Harley-Crocker-English family– the Secret Police once told them to settle for just _one_ last name, as referring to them this way was a waste of time, not to mention, kind of exhausting, but they were born with different names and choosing one would be a dick move for the other three of them, and really, who were they to police (hah!) their family name? _Rude_ , Sheriff, fucking _rude._

Things had been confusing for them for a good portion of their younger lives, until Roxy, who would soon become a known and respected ectobiologist, finally found the solutions while preparing one of the last exams for her degree (she got it two years in advance, too). “We're all ecto-clones of each other!!” she announced happily one night at dinner, maybe a little too enthusiastically considering the fact that the next five panicked minutes were all filled Jane trying to free Jake's windpipe from a piece of tomato he had been eating. “What do you mean by 'clones', Rox?” John asked right after, interested himself in ectobiology, but never enough to renounce to his life-long dream to become a stand-up comedian. She had grinned wildly, before getting out a blackboard from her room. There were many diagrams and doodles of cats on it.

“So, there are a lot of complicated formulas and sciency blah-blahs behind this, but to make it short, we most likely were created articifially from pre-exhisting biological imprints of ourselves, prelevated from us in the past by some dude in a laboratory who then teleported us all here. This would explain why we all have the exact same age and incredibly similiar genomes, not to mention the fact that we kind of forgot the entirety of our childhoods before we turned thirteen.”

“Wait, wait, time out a sec.” Interrupted Dave, brows furrowed. “Are you telling me that we're all basically kind of the same person and we exist just because of... what, time shenanigans?”

“It's a little more complicated than this, but basically... yeah. We exist because of _“time shenanigans”_.” She made an exaggerated gesture for the parentheses, still grinning. “And no, we're obviously not all the same person, silly. You _wish_ you were as hot as me, Davey! We're just almost identical on a biological point of view, but aside from that, we're our own people.”

The topic wasn't approached again after that, they just all agreed it made sense and went on with their daily life. None of them were as excited as Roxy or John about it, but no one was freaking out, either. So someone in the future or in the past had decided to play God with time machines and created them. Who cared! Time was weird and nigh impossible to understand, and weirder things had happened before anyway. Remember that one time Dirk created a cybernetic copy of himself just to see if he could do it, and then it gained sentience, run away and created a new radio program that would just broadcast memes and colourful insults to Dirk himself? _That_ had been absolutely unforgettable.

It was later on, when the true weirdness (weird for them, at least; in the scale of Night Vale typical weirdness they probably were a six) began, and with their twenty-first birthday came more changes than just being able to legally drink alcoholics. And Rose, well, she learned very soon that she could _see_ things: in particular, foreseeing positive outcomes to possibly disastrous situations were her specialty.

They didn't understand, but in the end, they didn't care much for answers. So what if they had weird, god-like powers? So what if they were able to fly just by putting the slightest bit of concentration in it? So what if they were able to come back from the dead, it's not like they died all that often – and oh, the way they discovered this new aspect of their powers (or mutation?) was an incredible story, the kind that was still going around in town as a urban legend. It involved Dave, a failed internship at Night Vale Radio and him coming back home during his own funeral muttering  “college credits aren't worth this bullshit— woah, why are y'all crying? Who died?”.

The fact was, people cared. The Secret Police cared, and would keep them under special surveillance because they were scared of what they could do. The City Council cared, and were worried they were going to try and overthrow them one day (as if!). Citizens cared, and some of them cared in a less gross way, in a “I'm so glad you guys are around to save our mortal asses” way. Then there were the Angels and the other forces involved in the preservation of the continuum of this universe, and they cared for reasons of fate: the balance of time and space was paper thin, and it was so easy for humans to create small fires that would burn it completely, leaving them alone to wait for the end of all things. The Blood Space War in particular was a big blind spot in the timeline that  would one day play a big role in the fate not only of their small planet, but also entire galaxies. Every single event related to it needed to be treated with utmost care, and since Rose had handled so well the terrible Cherub invasion – which mostly consisted in just two Cherubs battling for the possession of the single body they were forced to share, true, but the Angels knew exactly what would have happened if they had left Caliborn and Calliope on their own – they must have thought it a good idea to make her play interplanetary ambassador for this particular occasion.

She was standing in chilly morning breeze, dressed in her richest ceremonial robes for the occasion, as the intructions left by the Erikas told her to. Nothing was ever said about what kind of aliens she was to expect, only to be prepared to fight back, just in case. She had brought Dave with her for extra protection (not that she needed any, but it was always better to be cautious),  despite his protest that it was Sunday, Rose, why wouldn't she let him just fucking sleep in on Sunday of all days?

They waited there in silence for two entire minutes, before the process of appearification begun. They were engulfed by brightness, like rays of a far away sun who had escaped its clutches and were now allowed to wander freely, except they weren't, because freedom was an effimerous concept, a binding of words, therefore going against the very definition of freedom itself. Then there was the wind, different from any wind John had ever heard, he would later say, heavy with screams and smelling strongly of blood. After all of that, then, there were the voices, louder and louder as the winds slowly dissipated and the lights stopped dancing around them, as if they had never been there in the first place.

There were twelve adult aliens in front of them, some confused, some irate, some just contemplating the new space around them, and they were all big, grey Alternians. Rose hadn't heard of Alternians in a long time, not since she had first seen a picture of them in a old history book inside the Library as a kid, her breath damp with tears as she tried not to make any noise that would somehow attract a Librarian. They were a warrior race, born to conquer and kill with their long claws, their thick skin and the knife-like teeth, not to mention the horns, different for every single one of them, that they would sometimes use in battle to charge at their enemies. Such a large group would've been a frightening sight for anyone, had they not been quite obviously bickering in the long chirps and hisses that constitued their native language. They were so upset she was able to understand just a tiny fraction of what they were saying, and it was all swearwords.

“What the fuck,” Dave whispered, and she agreed completely with his tone of disbelief. Why the hell were there Alternians (or was it trolls? She wasn't sure what was the best way to refer to them) of all the people in the universe? They were a big Empire, sure, but too far away to pose a threat for Earth. It just didn't make sense. She waited for them to stop, but when one of them, a long haired one, made the motion to punch one of her companions, she cleared her voice to capture their attention, putting an end to their charade.

“Good morning,” she did her best to flash them a friendly smile, but it probably came out a little too condescending. “My name is Rose Lalonde, and this is my twin Dave Strider. I was designated to greet you in the name of all of Night Vale and I'm going to be your host for however much time you will spend in our humble town.”

She heard the one with the red cancer sign on his chest mutter (still audible though) “what the fuck is a twin?!”, before the libra one elbowed him on the thorax. After a few exchanges of questioning clicks between the group, they nodded, and parted to let a particularly tall Alternian step in front of them and oh, how the breath in Rose's throat stuttered at the sight. She had a virgo sign embroidered on what looked like a battle uniform (Rose presumed the troll was a she by the way her companions referred to her, otherwise she wouldn't have dared to impose human pronouns to an alien who most likely had no understanding of human gender binary), and her skin didn't match the grey of the others, for it looked pale, almost translucent, like a newborn pearl shining in daylight. Jesus, Rose's prose hadn't been so purple in quite a while, not ever since she was a teenager writing slashfics. Keep it cool, Lalonde.

“I'm Kanaya Maryam, and my friends here agreed to let me be their spokeperson.” She was smiling friendly and there was nothing but kindness in her eyes, and despite this Rose knew, deep into her soul, that she was able to turn deadly in the blink of an eye. “We're thankful for your kindness, we'll do our best not to make you regret it.” She then gave a side glare to some of the trolls, in particular the long haired one from before (who feigned an innocent smile) and the one with fins and a purple streak in their hair (who downright ignored her) “ _All_ of us. I'll make sure of it”. And there it was, the dangerous underside, like a blade ready to strike. She found way less scary than she ought to. From the way beauty and death alike shone in her elegant features, Rose was left speechless for twenty entire seconds – Dave counted them, the little shit – then he tried to get a hold of herself and get back to her duty, althought her welcome speech was ruined by the fact that she was unable to move her gaze away from Kanaya.

 

Memorizing her alien guests' names had been easier than she thought it would be, considering all she needed to do was associate a name to the star sign the troll was marked with. On the other hand, getting them to settle down like the Angels had ordered her to do had been a nightmare. There were at least five of them who kept insisting they wanted to go back, they _needed_ to be there for their planet in this moment of need. Feferi in particular wanted to be present when the current Empress fell, so she could take her righteous place on the throne, and anyway this kind of climate was unsafe for a seadweller such as herself, didn't Rose have a _bloodpusher,_ for fuck's sake? Which, of course, at least explained why Eridan had spent all the time whining about how hot the weather was, ensuing several hours of music coming from nowhere in the Strider-Lalonde mansion. Then, there was the matter of sleeping. Trolls were a nocturnal species, sun could hurt their eyes permanently – as Terezi told her pointing to her own red shades, grinning – and so they were up whenever her and her siblings went to sleep. And by the eldricht terrors,  they were _loud:_ they fought over every little thing, from what movie they wanted to watch to what to eat, and when they weren't fighting they lamented how inferior humans were in everything, apparently - especially they hated beds with fervent passion and missed their recuperacoons very, very much.

At the end of the fifth day she sat down on her sofa, massaging her temples in a useless attempt to stop the incoming migraine. She was exhausted. This was nothing she was prepared to: she had expected fights and diplomacy, not... this. She wanted nothing more than march up to that house near the Car Lot and have a few _words_ with Josie's holy friends, since they could have at the very least warned her to buy ear plugs: Dave and Dirk were known insomniac, so it wasn't a problem for them to have people going around the house while they were not-sleeping (which usually meant playing Mario Kart until one or both of them passed out of sheer exhaustion), but Rose had important business to attend to during the day and she needed at least a few hours of sleep. She was dozing off when she saw Kanaya exit the kitchen with two steaming cups in her hands; she offered one to Rose, who accepted it with a tired, thankful smile, and sat down next to her, adjusting her long skirt so that it wouldn't wrinkle. Kanaya, Rose had learned almost right away, was a peculiar troll: she was the only one who was able to withstand the desert sun without putting her health in danger, and she was diurnal. "I'm on a different... diet from my companions," she had also said to Roxy when asked the reason why she never attended meals with the rest of them. It was still a mystery what this diet was, considering no one had seen her eat anything yet: all of her spare time was spent either sewing in the room she shared with Vriska and Terezi or reading Alternian literature in the living room. Karkat would often join her in the latter with his own books, and that was one of the rare occasions in which Karkat seemed to be able to shut up for more than three seconds. Still, Rose was a polite host and didn't like to pry.

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience we're causing you," she began saying, stirring a spoon inside her cup. Rose recognized what she had been given as tea only that moment, and took a small sip. It was a taste she didn't recognize, but it wasn't unpleasant and the warmth was so comforting and familiar she felt some of her stress melt away. "I know my friends are not exactly easy to deal with, and the circumstances only make them behave even worse than usual..."

Rose shook her head. "No, I understand. Or well, I don't since I don't know what brought you on our planet—"

"You don't?" her eyes widened in surprise. "I thought you were told exactly the reason for our presence here!"

In fact, the Angels had told her close to nothing about the trolls. Many of their notes had been just them telling her to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydratation or small encouraging messages. Thoughtful, true, but almost useless.

Kanaya finished her tea in a single, elegant swig, and began to speak.

"Our home Alternia is currently facing an internal crisis, you could say. There was a civil war incoming, we could all see it in the way the Empress was slowly losing any sort of public approval. She started killing lowbloods indistincly, we..." she sighed, and for a moment Rose could see the way her posture betrayed her weariness. "We found ourselves in the middle of it. Karkat was captured after a drone found out about his blood colour and Her Imperial Condescension decided to make an example of him. A warning to others who wanted to rebel against the hemospectrum, I'm sure."

Rose nodded. She had learned a lot about the Alternian hemospectrum in the last few days, and she also knew Karkat had a rare mutation that put him outside of it, a living proof that blood castes weren't as set on stone as previously thought. Killing him would have been a symbolic gesture to assure the continuation of the hemospectrum.

"We couldn't let him die like that, of course. So we worked on a plan to get him out of the trial before they could cull him. Aradia found an ancient machine she was sure would teleport us away just in time, and it worked out just fine in the end. But by saving Karkat, we accidentally let the civil war begin."

Oh, that explained why it was called Blood Space War: it must have all begun with the Alternian civil war. "I'm sorry for you planet." Rose replied. The trolls were probably so irritated with each other and everything around them because it was easier to deal with small things than the idea of your home being slowly destroyed from the inside while you were unable to do anything about it.

"Thank you." Kanaya flashed a small, but sincere smile, and Rose responded in kind.

They spent the rest of the evening in companionable silence, the discussions, screams and occasional broken plates an almost conforting background noise. And if Rose fell asleep on Kanaya's shoulder at some point, well, she never mentioned being bothered by it, so it was probably okay.

 

They discovered two days later that Kanaya Maryam was the troll version of a vampire – a _rainbow-drinker_ , to be precise. Which explained why she never ate or why her skin would light up like a lightbulb whenever she was embarassed or pissed off. "This won't cause any trouble in my permanence here, will it?" she asked with evident worry in her voice

"Ya kidding?" replied Roxy, "most of the people here are some level of dead, physically or spiritually. Hell, Rosie-girl there dated not one, not two, but the beauty of _three_ vampires in high school. And wasn't there a werewolf too, sis?"

Rose pointedly changed topic and did not _blush_ , no matter what her devilish sister slash ecto-clone said.

 

It took a reasonable amount of time, but in the end all of them settled in some sort of routine. Once the realization came that there was no way to go back home, the Alternians figured out that exploring the town they were stranded in for the time being would be a much better way to spend their energies than fighting each other and the humans around them.

Aradia was curious about _everything_ and it became a customary sight to see her pushing Tavros' wheelchair around the city and even outside of it (Dirk had made sure to adapt the wheels for different kinds of ground and for the lack of it, after the troll was almost swallowed alive by quicksands), greeting everyone she meet with a big, razor toothed smile and a wave of her hand. Jake would often join them, happy as he was to have new people to go visit the Sand Wastes with; the three of them became close friends in almost record time, and would come back home at the small hour of the morning, covered in sand, occasional mud and with a new story to tell. Sometimes they would bring back the bones of some small animal for Dave, who did his best to conceal how touched he was by this gesture. Karkat discovered the existence of the Library and disappeared for three solid days; everyone feared the worst and Dave offered to go search for him, only to find him passed out in the middle of the Romance section surrounded by books of dubious content, the corpses of several Librarians all around him as a sort of warning for all others who would want to try and bother him. Nepeta even started interning Night Vale Radio, and who was better for the job than a troll with almost impenetrable skin, incredible fighting skills and a burning love for cats? Cecil was ecstatic at the idea of having of having someone around who wasn't going to die within the first week, and even more so Equius applied for the job too, even if he would sweat a little bit too much when asked to beta-read Cecil's fanfiction. It made sense that Equius and Nepeta worked together at the same place, the two of them were like a "buy one, get one free" sale promotion in a supermarket.

Rose wasn't quite able to understand the nature of their relationship, until Kanaya offered to introduce her to the concept of trolls romance and quadrants. She had just begun to explain what a moiralligiance was and how crucial it was in Alternian society, when Karkat overheard her and swept in with a thick manual to help her out. They made examples based on their own group: there were estabilished relationships – Equius and Nepeta had been moirails since they were four sweeps old, while Aradia and Feferi's matespritship was more recent – and vacillations – Eridan's red crush for Feferi while they were still in a moirailligiance, and Terezi and Vriska's situation, that kept on going from pale to red and, occasionally, to black, in a giant, confusing mess of feelings. Dave was present through the entire discussion and kept commenting about how he thought alien romance was ridicolous, but Rose could see the way he had stopped listening to any music and seemed to pay more attention to them than whatever he was working on his PC. When Karkat finally lost the only sliver of patience he had been hatched with and started a discussion with Dave, Rose quietly asked Kanaya if she was perhaps occupied in any quadrant, mentally giving herself a high five for how smooth that had been. Her pale skin had shone bright for a few seconds, before she managed to get it back under control and answered that no, she wasn't, as she had only ever been in a moirailligiance before and it hadn't ended all that well. Rose couldn't stop grinning after that, not even when Dave whispered "gay" at her right after the other two went back to their daily business.

The only one of the trolls with no intention to give up was Eridan, who kept going on and on about how he had dreamed his entire life to finally destroy land dwellers and _now_ that he was able to do so he was stuck in an unfamiliar galaxy, forced to interact with someone even worse than lowbloods, alas the human race – or what of it was left in Night Vale. Truth to be told, there were very few people in town that actually followed the criteria for a "normal human". Rose tried her best to warn him against being so loud in his complaints, but it was useless: in the following months Eridan was captured several times by the Sheriff's Secret Police, mostly for the disturbance he kept causing wherever he went, going as far as forcefully entering City Hall to have a talk with the Council. In the end, when Jake communicated her he had seen "that fishy fella" entering the Whispering Forest and not coming back, Rose couldn't say she was sorry about his demise – or well, to be more specific, the demise of his individuality, as all who enter the Whispering Forest are fated to become one with it. The rest of the trolls took the news with way more glee than expected, even if Aradia still proposed to make a "Earth funeral" in his honor. It was lovely, even if Feferi and Karkat seemed to be the only ones to have somewhat nice things to say about him.

 

Between her job and her duties with the Angels, Rose was  a busy woman. The same could be said for her siblings: Roxy spent so much time at the laboratory they often forgot she was still supposed to live together with them, Dave had a job at Dark Owl Records and was also quite good at making and mixing music (it wasn't unlikely to hear his pieces in the Weather section of Cecil's show), and dulcis in fundo Dirk, who slept maybe once a year and spent the rest of his living time turning scrap metals into functional robots, blatantly ignoring the Council's ban on all sentient technologies after the deal with Megan Wallaby and her computer. This meant they couldn't always be around to help the trolls out or warn them about what they could and couldn't do in Night Vale – not that any Secret Police officer would have done anything to them if they went against the rules. The fact that most of them had survived this long without a scratch was pretty telling of their endurance, even without considering the "big, tall and fully capable of dismembering you" look they all shared.

It was their host's fault, really, when a small group of them got into a fight with a group of Hooded Figures. They should have told their alien guests about the dangers of the Dog Park and its inhabitants, but Rose saw them listen to Night Vale Radio once and had thought they would learn enough from that, without needing her intervention. Instead, Vriska almost died trying to take out one who had "looked at her wrong" and Terezi and Sollux remained injuried trying to get her as far away from them as possible. A nice night in which they had just wanted to go out and finally try "human waffles" at the Moonlight All-Night Diner turned into a small tragedy: when they came back there was so much colourful blood around the house Kanaya had excuse herself and retreat in her room before started doing something on the line of "licking the carpet clean". It was only several hours later, after Jane finally declared Vriska out of danger and patched up the other two at the best of her abilities (which meant they were now feeling even better than before and most likely got a home-made lollipop from her), that they noticed someone was missing from the group: Gamzee was nowhere to be found, and when Karkat tried to call him on the small cellphone he received from Rose on the first day, he was surprised to see his own phone turn into a bird and fly away.

It seemed that, in the middle of the chaos, the juggalo had thought it a good idea to try and climb the Dog Park's obsidian walls, and was now currently lost on the other side, unable to come back. His friends feared the worst for a few days, until Gamzee finally texted back that he had found nice desert people to talk to, and was doing ok. "Better than ok, actually," he had confessed when Karkat finally captured his phone and was able to call him again. "it's cool here, it kind of like home. I think I'll stay".

Since he wasn't tecnically dead, no funeral occured after his disappearance, and it seemed like very few of them missed his presence. Alternians were curious in their lack  care for each other's life, Rose thought, until Tavros explained that he had been worried about how restless  he had seemed in the last month, and maybe him being somewhere else would make him feel better. It was for the best, really.

Karkat was quieter than usual for a few days, until Dave got him to try out Mario Kart and he got back to his usual, irritated self.

Everything went back to normal, as normal as life can be for four clones and the ten aliens they were hosting.

 

The desert sun was, at the very best, mildly unsufferable for the people who weren't used to it, but Kanaya was an exception: there was nothing she loved more than feeling the warm hug of solar rays around her elegant figure. "It reminds me of my old hive," she would explain when asked why with a small, nostalgic smile. Her and Rose would often go out for a stroll in the hottest hours of the day, while the other Alternians were sleeping and most citizens unable to go out without risking an immediate heatstroke – Rose was only too happy to keep her company, as "there's nothing better than a walk to clear out your mind before getting back to writing," or so she would say to her siblings, but by the smug looks on their faces, no one was buying it. They would talk about their days, about the dress Kanaya was currently working on and how fabrics on Earth had a much different texture than those she was used to, about Rose's latest writing project and the way her editor kept bugging her to put less complicated metaphores and more actual plot. Sometimes she would tell her of her hive on Alternia, of her role as a jadeblood and her lusus. All the things she missed, those she didn't and those who had been so bad she was glad she wouldn't have to witness anymore. In return, Rose would tell her tiny anedoctes about her and her family: that one time her prom date accidentally shape-shifted into a large rock after a strong sneeze, making it impossible to go on with any dance. The first time she managed to foresee a end-of-the-world situation and had to run to the radio station and then to all the nearest public places to alert citizens of the danger they were unknowingly risking, lungs burning and tears risking to escape from the corner of her eye, chants of "faster, faster or we're all gonna die, we're all gonna die" screamed in the back of her head.

They were walking close enough to each other that the back of their hands would brush every now and then, so it only made sense for Rose to take Kanaya's hand in hers, careful not to accidentally hurt herself against her claws. A moment, the a heartbeat, and Kanaya squeezed her hand back, intertwining their fingers without a word.

With the sun as their only witness they shared tiny pieces of their lives, the parts that were worth mentioning and sometimes those who weren't, and were in fact just excuses to keep the conversation going, to let these moments last even just the slightest bit longer.

 

Their first date was at the White Sand Ice Cream Shop. It took several months of closeness and not-flirting with each other, but finally Rose gathered up her courage, marched up to Kanaya and asked her out. Or, well, first Terezi took her aside and told her that if they didn't get it on anytime soon Vriska would go crazy and start smashing up all of the lights in her house just to create the right mood, _not kidding._ According to Karkat, they had some sort of bet going on about when they would get together, they both lost and now they just wanted them to stop dancing around each other because it was "fucking embarassing to witness, Lalonde, please save us sad, lonely assholes from the sight of this awkward mess. I didn't survive getting culled for this".

Maybe it wasn't the most appropriate place for a romantic evening, but Kanaya had never tried ice cream before (she was able to eat regular food if she wanted to, it just seemed unnecessary to her most of the time), and Rose was curious to see her reaction. She was even more beautiful than usual, wearing a long dress Rose had never seen on her before that showed much more of her skin than her usual outfits. She was stunning and Rose couldn't believe in her luck, she wanted to pinch herself to see if this was real life, or just an amazing dream. She had hit the intergalactic jackpot, so to say.

It was a little awkward at first, what with Rose trying to discreetly whipe her sweaty hands on her dress and Kanaya's vampire gleam attracting the attention of confused pedestrians, but it was just a moment before they both looked at each other and started giggling like teenagers, giddy and happy. They held hands the entire time, even after Hannah Gutierrez gave them their ice creams – and Kanaya's expression was _so_ worth it, a mix of shock and delight and weirded out that made her face scrunch up in an unbelievably endearing way. Hannah's wife Lucy commented on what a beautiful couple they were, and Rose couldn't stop the pleased giggle that escaped her throat: there was no use for her calm, collected self tonight, not when she was feeling happy and carefree like she hadn't been since she was a kid, and it was all thanks to Kanaya's presence beside her.

They started walking the way back home after the void and stars alike begun filling the sky, not talking but sometimes looking, communicating with their eyes because words were useless compared to the way Rose's thumb was caressing the back of Kanaya's hand. They reached the front door of the Strider-Lalonde mansion, and that's when they kissed, a small smack of lips, soft and nice. They were both figuratively and literally beaming, until some neighbours – John, of course it was John – screamed that if they didn't want to fucking blind everyone in the radius of a mile, then maybe they ought to go inside. Rose rolled her eyes, flipped the bird at him and got on her tiptoes to kiss Kanaya again, and kept going after that, her arms circling her hips and hugging her tight.

When they finally went back in, Rose was sure she was on another plane of existence, literally floating above the ground with happiness. Dave, who had been making himself a cup of coffee when they came back, grimaced when he saw her. "Wow, you're happy, that's gross." he remarked, shutting up after he got a slap upside the head from Karkat.

 

After a year or so, it finally started sinking inside Rose that the trolls weren't meant to go back home for a long, long time, maybe even their entire lifetime. The Erika from that one day in the Ralph's came to visit, and finally told her the entire truth. How Alternia was a ticking bomb ready to explode for the moment being, and how the political situation was so fragile even the tiniest blow of wind threatened to wreck it. "The empire is big, bigger than you can even imagine, and a war on the mother planet means war on all the other planets." Ey had sighed, sipping the particular kind of troll tea Kanaya prepared for herself and whoever else wanted it (read: only Rose and sometimes Vriska) at the end of a hard day. Dave nicknamed it "Alteania" and asserted was made with dead leaves picked from the ground, since as far as they knew, a place like Alternia had no use cultivating plants just for the purpose of making tea. "Miss Peixes is the rightful heir to the throne, should the Empress die, but in case of the rebellion's success, she would most likely be culled as soon as she set foot on her planet, and the other highbloods with her. The same goes for mister Vantas and the lowbloods: should the rebellion fail, they would be killed on the spot, and their existence is important for the future of all trollkind, weird as it sounds. I'm not allowed to say anything else, sadly: it's a matter of fate."

Rose couldn't stop herself from frowning. "If it had been fate, shouldn't I have expected it? Understanding the future is kind of my thing. Wait, that's not the problem: you told me this was a mission to stop an intergalactic slaughter or whatever else, not just give home to a bunch of alien refugees. I don't understand."

"Uhm, yes that's...." ey fumbled with eir words for a bit. Rose was gazing sternly into eir many eyes, and that made em even more fidgety than usual. "Look, this is entirely my fault, I worded poorly the message I was supposed to pass to you, and then I panicked and was afraid you would refuse, and there's no one else in town who has enough space in their house. Except Harley maybe, but her house is full of dogs! There's nothing but dogs everywhere!! Why are there so many dogs?"

"She just really loves dogs." Rose replied. No need to tell em that Jade was partially a dog herself. "So you're saying that you guys just wanted my help because I have the biggest house in town?"

"It's a little more complicated than that but.. yeah. I'm sorry. I did not lie, you're really avoiding many deaths this way, but not it the "stopping a big bad universal war" way. The Blood Space War has already happened and needs to end on its own: putting a complete stop to it would just doom our plane of reality. Again, I'm really sorry." Ey were nervous, but Rose was not as pissed off at em as she probably ought to be. Yes, her house was never going to be as silent and peaceful as it used to be, but she didn't mind it. Not when she was getting used thinking about the constant state of chaos as familiar and comforting, especially when her and Kanaya would curl up together on the couch in the middle of it, reading or deciding together what to watch on the TV.

That also explained why the notes the other Erikas left her were so useless: they were a nice way to let her know they cared about her and were thankful for her disponibility. Except the part about her cerimonial robes...

"Oh, that!" Erika exclaimed, like ey had been reading her mind – which, of course ey were. "How are things going with miss Maryam?"

It took Rose a few seconds to put all the various puzzle pieces, but when she did she couldn't help but laugh. This was her life: getting set up with terrifying alien beauties from a bunch of non-existent Angels.

By the Horrorterrors, she loved this town.

 

"Do you ever think about how improbable it was?" Rose said, raising her eyes from her notebook. It was early in the morning, the best moment of the day to put her ideas on paper. She quite enjoyed writing by hand, despite how much harder the ban on all writing utensils made it.

"What do you mean, dear?" Kanaya replied. She was sewing a doll dress at the request of a small ghost kid who lived nearby. She adored children, Rose discovered, even if she was never sure how to act around them.

"For us to be together." Rose added. "I mean, we lived entire galaxies and thousands of light years away from each other. If it had not been for the Blood Space War and the Erikas' holy intervention, we would have never even met."

There were so many variables involved in their meeting that could have gone differently. It made her ponder about the vastity of the universe, about destiny and other things she was pretty sure she was forbidden from thinking about.

Kanaya's lips curved upwards. She set aside her sewing set and got up to sit down on the chair next to Rose's.

"Yes, I do think about it. Honestly, even in my wildest dreams I never thought I would find a matesprit as perfect as you." Her hands came to cradle her jaw. Despite the claws, her touch was nothing but gentle on Rose's skin. "I wonder who I have to thank for this."

She ducked and kissed her cheek, leaving a smear of lipstick behind that Rose did not clean away for the rest of the day, wearing it proudly around town and at home.

She kept wondering how she could have not foreseen this, her life being turned upside down in the best way possible, but in the end, she stopped caring for an answer. The equilibrium and order of the universe simply existed as bigger things, relative and yet absolute at the same time.

Maybe she needed to listen to what Erika told her: it was a matter of fate, not to be questioned, just accepted. Rose was very glad to surrender to it, for once.

**Author's Note:**

> written for rosemarymonth and officially my first Homestuck fanfiction on Ao3! I'm so glad I managed to finish it right before my last exam for this year.


End file.
